


War Bride

by rageprufrock



Category: Naruto
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-31
Updated: 2019-01-31
Packaged: 2019-10-19 16:28:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,011
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17604872
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rageprufrock/pseuds/rageprufrock
Summary: Of all the people who could be acting weird about Naruto getting married, Iruka really hadn't anticipated Kakashi.





	War Bride

The problem with relationships forged in extremis was how pared down they were. In the roiling noise and constancy of war, for those awful years, Iruka was grateful for the lean weight of Kakashi's body, the unbending courage of him, his rare but beautiful smiles. It was enough to have him, any of him, and it had seemed the worst kind of greed to ask for anything more. And Iruka, an orphan and a relative nobody, knew to take what was freely offered, and knew better than to strive for more.

Except now it was peacetime, and Kakashi was acting like a lunatic.

* * *

It had started two weeks ago, after Iruka — still red-eyed and tender through — had brought a late dinner to Hokage Tower and news of Naruto's request.

"Should I send ANBU out to avenge your savaged heart, Iruka-sensei?" Kakashi had asked, dressed down in uniform blacks and, absurdly, a tac vest. The ANBU outside the door had made a long-suffering noise. 

Iruka had laughed. "No, no, sorry — just — Naruto asked me to stand at his wedding to Hinata as his father. Can you believe it?" 

"That the Hyuugas are letting their Hinata-hime marry Naruto — no," Kakashi had joked, but his voice had gone softer with consideration and he'd whispered, "Congratulations, Sensei," and then, well. 

It was a good thing Iruka's long experience teaching left him with a particular skill for tactical shoe throwing to close inconveniently opened doors.

And that had been _fine_. _That_ had always been fine, only later when they were eating cold bento and — the Third forgive them — using the ceremonial hokage robe as a picnic blanket on the office floor, Kakashi had asked:

"So, have you ever thought about it?" 

Iruka, whose lunch period had been consumed by Shikamaru's latest attempt to argue for Montessori implementation and less teacher oversight at the Academy, asked, "Think about what?" around a mouthful of pork gyoza. 

Kakashi shrugged. Gilded in moonlight, his shoulders continued to be infuriatingly gorgeous. "Ah, well — the situation with Naruto — _marriage_."

Iruka thought of Naruto, all sharp elbows and edges, his sweaty, smudged face and wild blond hair, how loud and awful and exquisitely lovable he'd always been, and nearly choked laughing. 

"No," he admitted, grinning. "It just seems like something for someone else, you know?" 

"Oh," Kakashi said, and went completely mute for the rest of the night.

"Are you sure you don't want to come over tonight?" Iruka had asked later, going systemically through all of the cleaning jutsu he'd learned over the years to try and remove the worst of the cloak's stains. 

Kakashi had said, "No," but his voice had been rough, overfull, and then an ANBU had arrived at the window with an urgent message before Iruka had been able to ask what was wrong. 

* * *

Despite his history, or maybe because of it, Kakashi didn't really hold onto his moods. He was shyer than he appeared and much more serious, but he was steadfast most of all: Konoha's pillar of strength, and in many ways that were too embarrassing and intimate to say aloud, Iruka's pride and joy. Iruka had always loved his village and its people, but he felt something shivery and great to stand under Kakashi's banner, to see the masons carving the handsome lines of Kakashi's face into the mountain. 

Whatever had seized him earlier that week, in the dark of his offices after hours, he'd discarded by Thursday, when he'd appeared five minutes till lunch in Iruka's youngest pre-genin class. He heralded his arrival in a flurry of summer-green leaves, and when they cleared he was standing in the room in the full ceremonial robes and hat. 

He told the room of stunned children, "Yo," and Iruka felt his gaze roll heavenward. 

The pandemonium was immediate and complete. Iruka imagined if Gaara arrived in a class full of five-year-olds in Sand, there might be a shy, overawed silence; meanwhile, every one of his little monsters jumped out of their seats and ran for Kakashi like a screaming, multicolored wave of sticky hands.

It spoke colorfully — and, Iruka thought, well — of how Konoha raised their children, and of their beloved Sixth Hokage, that the youngest and wisest and most vulnerable of their people were utterly fearless. That they'd crowd around Kakashi's shins, some demanding to be picked up, some pleased just to be near him, and almost everybody trying to grab a fistful of the robes. 

"Hokage-sama, what exactly are you doing here?" Iruka said, pitched loudly enough that he could be heard over 25 simultaneously babbling children. 

Kakashi, dangling an Inuzuka child from one arm, looked a vision of innocence.

"Can't an old ninja take an interest in the next generation?" he asked, and turning back to Iruka's crop of mischief, asked, "Now, which of you are going to be part of my ANBU guard?"

The shrieks that followed were deafening.

In the end, it took the combined efforts of four teaching assistants and Iruka's softest, most threatening voice for the class to remove themselves to lunch, though it was obvious from their mutinous expressions there would be hell to pay that afternoon.

"You're a menace," Iruka accused, watching Kakashi discard the hat and throw off his robes. The transformation was instantaneous: from Sixth Hokage to just Kakashi — Iruka's Kakashi, who was good and real and within reach.

And today, Iruka's Kakashi looked unrepentant, an expression with which Iruka was familiar, and the trick was entirely in a particular twinkle of his eye. 

"I had a free afternoon," he said, and reached out a hand. "Come on."

Iruka laced their fingers together, automatic. "Are you sure it's okay?" he asked, because even without the black hole of chakra drain that was the Sharingan, Kakashi liked to spread himself too thin. He'd pared himself down to the barest essentials, and spent lavishly on everyone else. If Kakashi had a free afternoon, then — 

"I can hear those cogs in your brain turning — stop it right away," Kakashi said, and loped toward the classroom window, tugging Iruka along. "It's an order."

And then they were leaping off the sill, into the bright white midday sun, the sky infinite and azure overhead, and Iruka couldn't help but laugh, "Oh, well, if it's an order." 

They ended up in a hidden clearing, tucked away inside a copse of trees near the river where the narrow branches overhead made a cathedral of summer green leaves. There was the soft sound of water rushing and the air smelled like deep forest: loam-dark and wonderfully alive. It was cool in the heat of the day, and Iruka pressed Kakashi happily into the grass to drag down his mask and kiss him, lingering and tender, hoping Kakashi could understand him and everything Iruka was somehow still too shy to say out loud.

"You're important to me," Kakashi started, and — closing a hand over Iruka's cheek — said with a strange roughness in his voice, "You know that, right?" 

Iruka wanted to smile and say, 'Of course I know,' but he couldn't, not around the stone in his throat and the sudden sharp, sweet pain in his chest. To be able to be near Kakashi was enough, Iruka had convinced himself. To want anything more was greed, selfishness, impossible. Sometimes Iruka woke up in the middle of the night to the weight of Kakashi's arm around his middle and felt like a cup overflowing, felt like he wanted to barricade them inside his little apartment and share Kakashi with no one else. But he belonged to the village first, and himself most of all, and Iruka couldn't bear for anyone to hem Kakashi in any more — especially not himself. 

But Kakashi looked so incongruously lost in the shade of the trees, eyes searching Iruka's expression, that Iruka could only nod, mute with the hugeness of his feelings, and press his face into Kakashi's shoulder.

He ended up late for the after lunch weapons practical, for which Kakashi was completely unapologetic, and from which the four teaching assistants would likely never recover. 

* * *

The memory of war was still a chasing spectre, and shinobi, if they married at all, married young and in giddy, grateful haste. 

Naruto faced the prospect of a future with Hinata with a starry anticipation that made Iruka feel at once old, lonely, and so overwhelmed by affection that he wished any of his current students were as awful as Naruto had been so he could yell at someone deserving. The sad truth was, even if there was another god tier little shit hidden amongst the genin, there was too much to do for Iruka to go chasing anyone around the village: there were wedding kimonos to be made and properly embroidered, celebratory banquets to plan, family registers to update — and most critically, an effort to determine whether or not the Hokage had lost his mind to undertake.

In the days since their afternoon in the forest — since he'd pressed open-mouthed kisses to Kakashi's face, his throat with all of his sincerity — Kakashi been _unfathomable_. 

During the day, he fulfilled his duties as the leader of the village to matchless perfection and invested endless hours into lovingly torturing Naruto pre-wedding, all with his signature detached dignity. And then as soon as evening swept over the village and the noises and obligations of the day fell away, he transformed into someone Iruka had forgotten he could be: awkward, distant, unavailable. 

When Kakashi stayed for dinner, he either picked at his food or he ate it with the dutiful utility of any jounin of Konoha, and Iruka heard himself talking to try and fill in the suddenly uncomfortable silence. He went on about his students, or the faculty meeting that had almost immediately descended into chaos; he gave a staggeringly boring overview of the new paperwork policy surrounding chuunin mission completion documents. Mostly, since it was one of the only things that seemed to trigger a response, he talked about Naruto. He talked about how the Hyuugas were preparing _three_ wedding kimono for Hinata — "Since of course each stage of the ceremony will require a different kimono," he babbled — and he didn't say a word about how he and Naruto had both cried at the registry office when the ancient clerk had retrieved the Uzumaki and Namikaze family seals. He talked about how they'd met up with Hinata at the ramen shop for dinner, and how sweet it had been, to see Naruto laugh with someone he loved, how impossibly wonderful it was to have watched him grow from an angry, lonely child to a man who made all of Konoha proud — who made Hyuuga Hinata blush. 

On the third day of this frankly bizarre silent treatment, when Iruka was minutes away from breaking his rice bowl over Kakashi's head, Kakashi said suddenly: 

"So you don't oppose the wedding."

Iruka entertained a brief, bewildering image of one of Naruto's hideous crying faces. 

"I — of course not! They're terribly in love," he managed, finally, and added after a beat, "And if Hinata doesn't have him no one else will." 

"Then it's also not marriage in general you oppose," Kakashi ventured slowly.

Iruka felt like he was trapped in a genjitsu. "Why on earth would I oppose marriage?" 

"Ah," Kakashi answered, with the grave heaviness of conclusion. He pushed away from the table, from his picked over tempura, and said, "It's just me, then." 

Iruka realized he was holding his chopsticks like he'd wield a knife. Either Kakashi's deeply unwanted ANBU guards had no idea how often Iruka felt genuine killing intent toward the man or they didn't care; either option was equally plausible, given that Kakashi had been their squad leader and chief inquisitor for years. 

"What are you _talking about?_ " Iruka pleaded.

Kakashi didn't answer. He didn't even look up, just perched in a tense crouch halfway up to his feet with a nauseating blank expression on his face. But Iruka could read the tightness in the beautiful, rangy lines of his arms, the banked anger in the set of Kakashi's shoulders. In the height of Kakashi's anger, in the peak of his fury and the nadir of his hope, the spaces around him smelled like the preface to a lightning storm: crackling. Iruka felt electricity on his skin, now, warning.

It was hard not to touch him — it had always been hard not to touch him — and Iruka was so tactile with his worry: from mending kisses to scraped knees for the littlest genin to a squeeze on the shoulder for his students, long since graduated and too old to run up to their Iruka-sensei, demanding hugs. Kakashi was a worse and more desperate case, but Iruka had years and years of practice keeping his hands to himself, of being undemanding, to receiving gratefully, of twisting his fingers tightly in his lap with discipline instead of putting a hand on Kakashi's chest to feel the thunder of his heart.

When Iruka managed to speak again, he heard the cracks in his own voice: 

"Will you tell me what's wrong?" he asked, and tried not to beg. Iruka always tried not to be embarrassing, not to let the way he always felt too much and too deeply — _inconveniently_ — make things awkward. "I know there's a lot of things you can't tell me, or that I might not understand, but — "

"What are we to each other, Sensei?" Kakashi cut in suddenly, utterly flat: the supernatural stillness before a tornado.

Iruka's face went as abruptly hot as his hands and feet were cold. It was a question he tried not to think about too much, that he'd always dismissed before it could get its teeth and claws into him. He can't answer because he doesn't know himself, never had the courage or the audacity to put a name to whatever it was between them. From the first time — Kakashi telegraphing every move like asking for permission as he closed the distance between them — to the last time, Iruka's answer to every question, asked or unasked, has simply been " _yes_." 

"I — we're friends," Iruka answered, keenly aware of how stupid it sounded, and it was greed and a little possession that made him say, "We're important to each other."

'Friends' was what he told his acquaintances, his less familiar colleagues, anyone for whom an explanation of his history with Kakashi would prove overly intimate — even without full disclosure or any of the more graphic details. That had always been the problem with Kakashi, with anything in his orbit: it became fantastical and unbelievable, too big and complicated, too important and unwieldy to be associated with a boring old schoolteacher. 

Kakashi let out a huff. "Ah — I did say that, didn't I?" 

Iruka stared down at his hands, knuckles white from effort. He felt humiliated and abstractly _hurt_ by everything, by all of this, by Kakashi and everything he'd done this last week. Iruka felt like he was failing, somehow, as if every possible answer he could provide would be wrong, and it opened a wound in his gut to hear the knife edges in Kakashi's tone. If Kakashi regretted having said such a thing, Iruka wished he'd be honest, that he'd provide a painless execution; it's what Kakashi would do for an opponent on the field of battle — it was the least he could do for Iruka.

And because Iruka could only honestly speak for himself, he croaked, " _Yes_ , and you're important to me, too, you know that," even though it failed so entirely to capture the truth of the thing, the totality of Iruka's feelings. 

Making sure his students memorized their chakra maps and putting out the burnable trash on the right day were important; Iruka might do unforgivable things for Kakashi — make mistakes and leaps so big and blindly he could never come back from them. 

Kakashi had gone from the eerie quiet before a storm to something less dangerous but no more happy. 

"If you don't mean it anymore, or if you never meant it at all," Iruka forced himself to say, hesitating. "Just tell me — I wish you'd just — "

"I do," Kakashi cut in, hoarse but not angry any longer, and when he looked up at Iruka, he looked tired but sincere, which was about as much transparency as could be expected from the Sixth Hokage, Iruka figured. "I'm sorry. I did, I do — " he reached over, and his hands were shaking a little when he closed them over Iruka's " — I'm sorry, sensei." 

And there was such a strange light in his eyes that Iruka felt like they were balanced on a dangerous precipice, as if a little push further would break something wide open.

Really, it was a blessing that the ANBU materialized in his apartment then and snatched Kakashi away for pressing business. 

* * *

Later on, Iruka would look back on the moment he decided asking Naruto about his personal life was his best course of action, and acknowledge it as one of the lowest moments in his entire existence.

"Have you noticed Kakashi-sensei being — weird?" he asked. 

Naruto favored him with such a blank look Iruka felt compelled to clarify.

"You know. Just, just lately," he added. "Just — acting strange." 

"Are you seriously asking me if Kakashi-sensei is _being weird_ ," Naruto said slowly, like he was trying to humor Iruka while simultaneously evaluating him for a head wound.

"I should specify as 'weirder than usual,'" Iruka allowed.

They were wandering around one of the newer districts in Konoha, less populated and still green and lush with leaves, house hunting. Hinata had a brief but very reasonable list of requests and a lot of other family and wedding-related duties to attend to, so Naruto — who had no list of housing requests but a lot of knee jerk feelings — had fetched up at the mission desk and looked pathetic until Iruka had said, "All right, all right, I'll come with you!" and packed it in for the day. 

"That's an impossible question," Naruto whined. "That guy has been being weird in 101 different ways at the whole village since I was 12. Any kind of weird is Kakashi-sensei's kind of weird — " he paused " — I mean, unless _you_ think he's being weird?" 

Iruka squinted between Hinata's crib sheet and one of the apartments being advertised in the estate agent window: south-facing windows, generous living room, recently reinforced roofline to contend with all manner of deranged jounin coming and going and eschewing the stairs and sidewalks like normal people.

"He seems…mopey," Iruka said finally. "This one looks like a good possibility?" 

"That one's got a weird bathroom, it's a weird shape, the tiles are a weird color," Naruto complained at the listing photos, and then went on, "And if Kakashi-sensei is moping, you don't got anybody to blame but yourself, Iruka-sensei."

The bathroom was square and the tiles were gray. Naruto was a lunatic.

"There's nothing wrong with that bathroom," Iruka argued, already imagining plants hanging in the apartment windows, books and blankets all over. It would be a good first home, away from the hubbub of the village main streets and far from the oppressive expectation of the old family compounds — insulated from the watchful eyes of the sprawling Hyuuga clan. "And how am I to blame for _Kakashi_ moping."

"Kakashi-sensei hates feelings and is generally pretty good about not having any," Naruto reported, and off Iruka's expression, clarified, "But he gets all weird about you — I try not to think about it because it's creepy."

"Kakashi does not get _weird about me_ ," Iruka sputtered.

"Kakashi-sensei gets _very weird_ about you," Naruto said, but he didn't elaborate any further. "And _how_ is that bathroom not weird to you? It's — "

"Normal," Iruka told him. "It's a _normal bathroom_."

Naruto frowned. "It needs a window — a real one. It looks so dark in the pictures."

"What if people peep at you through the window?" Iruka asked reasonably, since he had once enjoyed having a bathroom window until he'd caught Kakashi brazenly using it for just that purpose. "What if someone peeps at _Hinata_ through the window?"

"No one would peep at me, and if they did I wouldn't care," Naruto said, sounding honestly confused. "And if anybody tried to peep at Hinata, I figure she'd kill them."

Iruka considered this for a beat. 

"Fine," he allowed. "Back to the drawing board."

But that was the thing about Naruto, even if his logic was suspect and his reasoning flawed, there was always a kernel of uncomfortable truth at the root of even the most poorly articulated of his arguments. And that night, after Iruka had thumped Naruto soundly and threatened him with an even sounder one if he didn't just _pick_ an apartment already, Iruka found himself in his pointedly empty bed, haunted by the idea that Kakashi was _weird_ about him.

* * *

By Monday, the previous week's strangeness had amplified to a near unbearable level. Hokage tower was in a pall, all of its usual louche pragmatism gone the way of Kakashi's own louche pragmatism: utterly out the window. 

With every successive Hokage administration, the offices transformed to reflect their term. During the tenure of the Third, the tower had been unhurried and warm; with the Fifth, everything had crackled with her barely banked urgency, abetted by the slow ramp up to an increasingly inevitable war. Kakashi's tower took on the feeling of accidental efficiency, with the staff constantly trying new and competitively playful ways to leverage ninjitsu to find shortcuts and test boundaries. Short of open bloodshed, treason, or danger to Konoha, Kakashi was utterly indifferent to tradition — it hadn't been particularly kind to him. If Godaime's administration was holding unflinchingly to Konoha's foundation, Kakashi's was the splendor of an architectural experiment, spiraling upward into the clouds. 

It was — more than anything else — _fun_ to work in Kakashi's tower, to see what tremendous and poorly conceived ideas might emerge next. 

Today was not a fun day.

Already, a parade of jounin had been summoned to Kakashi's office and then cruelly abandoned by their comrades there, only to emerge minutes or — in one case — _an hour_ later looking, well, like they'd gone three rounds with _Hatake Kakashi_. The copy room, which was situated directly below the Hokage's office, had been blasted with such intense killing intent an hour after lunch that Mitsuki, the chuunin office manager, had declared it off limits until further notice. Also, the S-rank mission box was releasing an ominous and continuous stream of _smoke_.

Iruka, exhibiting cowardice beneath any true ninja of Konoha, was grimly ignoring all of it from his perch at the mission desk. If Kakashi was going to behave like a child, then Iruka was going to treat him like one of the dozens of pre-genin that emigrated through his classroom every year — by denying him any kind of reaction.

And then Naruto showed up again, looking bleak. 

"What's wrong?" Iruka asked, reflexive. "Is Hinata all right?"

"Sensei," Naruto said, sounding terrible. "How much longer are you and Kakashi-sensei going to be doing this?" 

Concern reconfigured itself into a scowl. " _I'm_ not doing anything."

"You're _killing me_ ," Naruto said, with feeling and a sharp, familiar whine. It rocketed Iruka back through time, to when Naruto was a lot shorter but about the same amount of annoying, complaining about how having to do homework was unfair.

Iruka raised an eyebrow. "Let me guess: your turn to get yelled at?" 

Naruto shuddered. "He's not even yelling. He's just torturing us for fun — " he narrowed his eyes at Iruka " — and probably because _someone_ has him feeling _all distrustful_."

"I refuse to be held hostage by his temper tantrums, I don't care if he's the Hokage," Iruka shot back, stamping a mission report with probably unnecessary force. "He's been acting like a lunatic since I told him you and Hinata were getting married, and every time I try to talk to him about it he either gets sad or angry."

"Well, _yeah_ , Iruka-sensei!" Naruto said. "I would be, too, if Hinata-chan had left me hanging like that!" 

Iruka froze. "What?"

"Like, well, if you're not, _you know_ , then at least you could come out and say it," Naruto complained, looking genuinely disappointed, which felt _harrowing_. "Like, fine, whatever, I wouldn't want to marry Kakashi-sensei either — "

" _What_ ," Iruka croaked.

" — But like, at least _tell_ the guy," Naruto implored, and leaning in as if he hadn't been declaring all of this as a volume that meant _Gaara_ had probably heard the whole thing, he added in a whisper, "Kakashi-sensei can be kind of sensitive — you know he reads all those dirty books for the plot, right?"

_I know_ , Iruka would have said if he wasn't too busy still choking on his tongue, on the explosion of questions that had flooded in: Kakashi wanted to _marry him?_ Since when? And _why?_ Kakashi thought Iruka _didn't_ want to marry him? _How?_ And most importantly: _why did Naruto know about this?_

Naruto, unmoved that Iruka was having a _stroke,_ said, "I'm just saying, one time Hinata-chan and I had a fight about if we were going to have ramen at the wedding — "

"No ramen at the wedding," Iruka said faintly, automatically. 

" — and the next two hours were the worst two hours of my life," Naruto concluded, with all evident conviction. The _actual_ worst part was, since Iruka had been forced to bear witness to the entire thing, he sort of believed that — despite the fact that his parents had been killed, he'd been an outcast of the village for most of his childhood, and that _he and Sasuke had blown off each other's arms_ — at least _Naruto_ believed it was true. "So just like, have a little sympathy for Kakashi-sensei right now, you know?" 

Iruka could _feel_ the press of two dozen milling, eavesdropping jounin. He was going to have to become a missing nin and live out the remainder of his terrible life in splendid rural poverty in some no-name village, trying to teach filthy children hiragana.

He covered his face with his hands, and through his fingers, ground out:

"Naruto, I'm going to ask you some questions, and I need you to tell me _exactly_ what Kakashi-sensei said."

* * *

In all the years Iruka had known Kakashi — in passing, as teachers to the same crop of mischief, more intimately — he'd never visited the Hatake family compound. 

In the beginning, when their only connective fiber had been badly mangled mission reports and Naruto, Kakashi had lived in the jounin dormitories, allegedly in the company of all his porn and a plant. And then during wartime, he'd lived in impromptu headquarters, in barracks, wherever he could snatch an hour, two, of sleep. After Iruka had kissed him back — wild with wanting and too scared to lose him to death to be scared to lose him to _this —_ then Kakashi had lived in a liminal state: in the Tower, on the battlefield, in the quiet forgiveness of Iruka's bed, where for a little while they could pretend he wasn't already bearing the weight of being the Sixth. It wasn't until later, in the soft epilogue of peacetime, that his staff had found Kakashi's state of evident homelessness unacceptable, and undertook a series of works on the Hatake compound before moving their new hokage in. 

The gate to the Hatake complex didn't have the ominous gloom of the Uchiha's. All of Kakashi's family tragedies were both smaller and longer ago, and the newly commissioned sign and fire-stained wood — characteristic of Konoha homes — looked only solid and reassuring, not forbidding at all. When Iruka ran his fingers over the knocker, the brass handle was warm from the setting sun, and Iruka remembered how Naruto had said, "He said you didn't want to marry him anyway, so belay the security survey and update on the house," and how Iruka's heart had felt flayed open. 

Only Kakashi was such a soft touch and a _complete liar_ , because under the skin of Iruka's palms, he could feel the hum of a seal barrier and the shivery sensation of a key turning a lock — the house _recognized him_. 

"Honestly," Iruka said, to himself and to the beautiful old eaves, the beautiful old paving stones, the neat green garden that the opening gate revealed, "if you'd only _said_." 

But that was Kakashi wasn't it, always concealing something casually crushing underneath the underneath, so thoroughly a ninja of Konoha that even his confessions of romantic devotion were shaped in secrets. Iruka couldn't be angry for it, not in the shade of the massive ginko tree in the front garden, not slipping out of his sandals and stepping onto the walkway, not remembering the way Kakashi had promised Iruka was important in the green light of the forest.

Kakashi, when Iruka found him, was sitting at the edge of a koi pond, pants rolled up and feet in the water, shoulders slumped. In the afternoon light, fading tired blue to luminous pink, Kakashi looked otherworldly, like something out of a book Iruka might read to his littlest students, and the sight of him made something in Iruka's stomach twist: happy and hungry and humming with possibility.

And because Kakashi must have heard Iruka coming, must have felt it in the tremors of the house's barrier, he said over his shoulder, "Ah — I guess Naruto blabbed."

"Of course Naruto blabbed," Iruka told him. "In a lot of ways, Naruto is a terrible ninja."

The grin — however small it was — on Kakashi's face was real. "But who do we blame that on, Iruka-sensei? You for his early education, or a failure in my mentorship?" 

Iruka smiled back, shy. "There's probably enough blame to go around there." 

"Always so sensible, Sensei," Kakashi murmured. 

Iruka could see it in the set of Kakashi's shoulders, the way his eyes were crinkling from trying too hard to smile: he was mortified; mortally wounded and trying to hide it. And it made it a little easier for Iruka to be brave, to be presumptuous, to sit down in the grass by Kakashi's side, stare into the glassy surface of the pond, and _confess_.

"I've been in love with you for years," he said, and felt the air around him _buzz_ , the barometic pressure drop, his voice faint in his own ears. The wind picked up around them. "I don't remember when it started, but I remember thinking — when you kissed me that first time — I remember thinking, 'oh, I didn't know I could actually have this.'"

Kakashi's stillness was profound: a stone at the bottom of a river, the suspended, eternal moment of 2 a.m. on a summer night, when the entire village was silent — finally — in sleep. And Iruka thought he'd never manage to say it, that if Kakashi didn't answer he'd just die on the spot, but now that he'd started, it all coursed from him like a gale.

"For all this time, I've tried to be very good," Iruka said, and leaned back to stare up at the gathering clouds. "I've always known you were very important, and very busy, and I always thought that it might be okay for me to steal a little of your attention if I didn't ask for too much, if I didn't get too greedy."

"That's — " Kakashi started, his voice the static of a radio frequency, " _Iruka_."

"I tried not to think about what it meant, or how it would be in the future," Iruka pushed onward. "I just told myself to enjoy it while I could, to remember everything for when you got bored or got too busy or — " he stumbled " — or if we lost you, because we were living in the middle of a war, and any moment could have been our last."

Kakashi's hand, when it closed over Iruka's, burned like cold fire. "I would have died to keep our people safe," he said, halting. "But I always wanted to live with you."

And oh, that was it, game over, Iruka realized, because now his eyes were stinging and the water of the pond was starting to doppler with a steady rain: a late summer storm as the stars began to uncover themselves and the last of the sun burned away.

"Do you still?" he asked, around the hope and hurt in his throat. "I know I did this all wrong, and I know it's very selfish, but I want to be selfish about you — is that okay?" 

Overhead, incandescent and electric, lightning was arcing through the sky, and the air around them smelled like ozone gathering, charged particles shivering like Iruka was shivering with anticipation. Iruka couldn't tell if this was the storm or if it was Kakashi, and it likely didn't matter — they were both a force a nature.

And instead of saying, "yes," or "what took you so long," or even, "I love you, too," instead Kakashi cupped Iruka's face in his hands — his eyes gleaming, supernatural — and he said, "I'm in your care, Iruka, and no other's," over a deafening roar of thunder. 

* * *

Given permission to begin a campaign of emotional and physical overreach, Iruka embraced it wholesale. Within a week he'd thrown away 90 percent of Kakashi's clothing — "These are rags. You're the Hokage; Sand will laugh at us," Iruka informed him — ordered furniture for all of the still-empty rooms of the Hatake compound — "People will think you're a weird serial killer, and I'm not living here if there's not a kotastu, this room is freezing and you throw off clammy air." — and won three fights with Kakashi's secretary, who was overscheduling him to within an inch of his life. 

It didn't exactly leave Kakashi with _a lot_ of free time, but it carved out enough that when Iruka abandoned Naruto to his final formal hakama fitting, there was perfect window to meet Kakashi at the registry office. 

"A dusty civic corridor, 20 stolen minutes between meetings — it's what every ninja dreams of as they're growing up for their special day," Kakashi teased, after informing the clerk that oh, of course they had witnesses, she could see the ANBU standing right there, couldn't she? Snake and Turtle looked even more murderous than usual. 

"I'm so sorry about him," Iruka told them, and turned back to Kakashi. "And oh, I'm sorry? Were you looking forward to the diplomatic three-ring circus your wedding would be? I could send a runner for Gai-sensei right now — "

"Oh, look, the papers are here," Kakashi interrupted purposefully.

They were, and so was their lecture, delivered by a tough old bird of a clerk, who seemed only marginally off balance that the _Sixth Hokage_ was her Thursday, 3:15 appointment. She informed them of the legal implications of the documentation they would sign, that they could access the papers anytime in an office the next corridor over with the records department, which welcomed walk-ins Monday through Wednesday from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Snake and Turtle were obliged to sign indicating their presence — Snake attempted to draw a picture of a snake; Turtle just wrote TURTLE; Kakashi said, "As Hokage, I'm declaring these legally binding." — and then the clerk said, "Now, if you'll give me your hands." 

Iruka barely felt the sharp bite of the knife, but when the clerk pressed his thumb to the license next to Kakashi's, he felt the shivery tingle of a seal activating. It was strange, like the fizz of water rushing upward, but eventually two smears of blood appeared on the page, and the clerk looked very pleased. 

"Excellent. No drugs or genjitsus," she declared, rolling up the scroll. "I now declare you legally bound for tax and household purposes."

"You're a true citizen of Konoha," Kakashi told her solemnly.

"Get out of my office, Hokage-sama," she replied, and turned to Iruka to say, "Good luck."

"Thank you," Iruka told her, and pulled Kakashi out of the building, under a blue and wide open sky — cloudless after a storm. 


End file.
